Yes, there are times when you may want your photos and pictures to be blurred! Facebook will soon be offering a new feature that will allow Facebook users to make it safer to post and share photos and other pictures. The McAfee plug-in is called “Social Protection” and will be launched at the end of this month. I learned about this new feature in an August 3rd article by Emily Price (http://mashable.com; “Facebook Photos Get Blurry With the Privacy Plug-In”).

In her article, Ms. Price describes the additional control Facebook users will have if they install the “Social Protection” plug-in. “Social Protection” will prevent others from downloading photos and pictures to view someplace other than Facebook. Both the sender and the recipient of the photos will have to have installed “Social Protection” for the blurred photos to become clear.

Facebook users will gain more control both from the “blurring” feature and because someone looking at their photos won’t be able to download or store them. People won’t be able to capture a screenshot of the photo image because of a padlock icon that will appear over the photo if someone tries to do so. Ms. Price’s article has a photo of this padlock icon and the graphic shows that the icon will cover the entire photo.

She described other features of the plug-in that will help protect Facebook users’ privacy. For example, the plug-in will alert a Facebook user if someone in their network uploads a photo to Facebook that looks like it might be that user but doesn’t tag the user in the photo. The Facebook user might or might not want to have the photo visible — if the user doesn’t want it made visible, he or she can ask the person who uploaded the photo to take it down ASAP before the user’s tagged.

As I mentioned, McAfee will be launching “Social Protection” at the end of this month. It will be initially available for Internet Explore, Firefox and Chrome on PCs; for MACs sometime thereafter; and by the end of 2012 for iOS and Android.

Lots of Facebook users like posting photos but might welcome more control over who sees them and how they get shared. “Social Protection” might be a good option for Facebook users to consider when it becomes available.